RECIPES!

Become a Fan

03 June 2010

I haven't disappeared.but maybe I have.it depends on how you look at it.many people will tell you I'm more present than ever.many of these last days have not been spent in the kitchen.but soon that's the only place I'll be.

These days I'm shaking hands with a lot of guys who sell big machines.They say things to me like, "Why are you being so fucking polite?! We don't trust you if you're too nice..." {Not gonna lie-- It's a strange acclamation to go from London to NYC.}

Excel has become a great friend of mine.

I've built a database in fact.One wouldn't think a pastry chef could do such a thing.The database does all sorts of mathematical tricks.And all the pages talk to each other. VLOOKUP and Dropdown Menus, yo.So few restaurants, and less chefs {who are not hotel/corporate trained, which I am not} understand the power of internal, back-end organization.The Excel document is a list of all raw product, a compilation of recipes, a break down of all product to show price per gram, a relay of price per gram embedded in each recipe to cost out each recipe, and, as we move through costing out each product, we can add these "working products" to our "list of ingredients."So if you want to know the cost of butterscotch ice cream you take the cost of ice cream as a recipe and add to it the cost of butterscotch, a working product, by the gram amount you need.

If this sounds too nerdy for you, or if this doesn't sound like cheffing as you know it, think about it this way: for every skill you add to your resume you become that much more valuable, can garner a higher wage and you might even be able to keep your job when the economy tanks.

This is the second restaurant database I've written, and if we all use it to its potential it will also help us with inventory, ordering, wholesale/catering, and price tracking.

Or think about it this way: It's easier to work in your business than on it.

What else am I doing? Test baking,measuring my station and the equipment I've ordered,having lots and lots and lots of menu meetings,talking to future staff about the possibility of working with me, with us, visiting the future home of the restaurant in all its stages: raw, midrare etc. {we are going to inhabit a building that basically needed to be gutted & rebuilt from the inside-out},tracking down an ice cream machine,attempting to navigate the farmers market and taking notes on which farmers have what produce during which weeks/months/seasons,organizing recipes & recipe notes,finding hard to find product through available purveyors and looking under rocks for the rest,going on field trips to places I won't be able to once we open the doors to the public,and spending as much time with my family and friends as I and they can and have time for.

"There's a lot of 'hurry up and wait.' You have all this time to organize yourself, your time and the project. But you wait. A lot. And then when the restaurant is going to open any minute you have a thousand things to do and no time to do them!"

I know you want to know more about the project. Where it is, who its with, what my menu will be like, when we'll open. I promise you'll know, as soon as I can tell.

It's not. In fact, one might say, in the whirl of confusion these colluding and colliding directives create, one achieves it, merely by spinning out of control in an attempt to be all things to all chefs in all kitchens everywhere.

walk in to a kitchen like it is someone else's home. walk in to their home like they are colleagues of your parents or your grandparent's friends. do not walk in like it's frat house. do not stroll into the small dog park if you're a rottweiler. do not take up a lot of space with your voice or your person or your neediness or your fright. be professional and courteous and pay close attention to the customs so you can follow them with as much ease as you can muster. walk into the kitchen on time. {"if you're on time you're late," as a friend of mine says.} walk in groomed. walk in with two sharpies in your pocket & a notebook beside it. one sharpie is thin for taking notes, the other is bold for masking tape labels. ask what the chef wants to be called. pay attention to the tone, the volume, the attitude the other cooks display and make sure yours, as a guest in that kitchen, is softer, more polite and clearer than the rest.

but

never act like you are above anyone. not other cooks, not the pastry department, not prep staff, not dishwashers, not waiters, not bussers, not coat check, not owners. no one. you are above no one. you are a worker among workers. no matter what your title. no matter what it says on your jacket. no matter where you went to school or who you worked for last.

When you first walk into a kitchen, you are humble. You own humility. Look it up. It does not mean you exist only to be humiliated. It does not mean to exude shame. It does not mean you attach a green light to your forehead and affix a sign between your shoulder blades that says, "Step on me. I am a rug you should feel delighted in wiping your muddy feet on. I am a doormat, a stupid rock, a worthless piece of poo."

being humble is the opposite of feeling entitled. standing with is the opposite of privilege. acting like a worker among workers means just that.

I may sound like a Socialist or a Communist or like some hippy radical intellectual academic philosophizing pollyanna. You can call me whatever name you want.

But I've worked in a lot of kitchens.

And I've stepped into even more.

And I am usually invited back.

Because no matter how many years I've worked, and how many amazing people I have worked with and for, and how many services I've been demolished by, and how many mistakes I've learned from, and how many tears of mine have fallen on the floor-- only to co-mingle with fryer oil food scraps, and no matter how many jobs I haven't gotten, no matter how well I know The Weeds, and no matter how many cuts & burns I've accumulated and patched up on others, and no matter how many times I've packed my knives & said goodbye,

no matter how many,

whether the number be one or too many to want to remember

I remain a worker among workers.

I stand on the same line, on the same side, with.

*

/this post was inspired by these two quotes:

"Why We Do What We Do. It’s about the peo­ple, the places, the peo­ple… Not for­get­ting how to
make things, how things are made, who is mak­ing them and why… show­ing
it to oth­ers and want­ing to share what we find in the world, it’s
about travel and dis­cov­er­ing and learn­ing." ~ Kiosk.

21 April 2010

In lieu of my recent restaurant departure I've come to have a few thoughts about how there are a lot of different kinds of pastry chefs, and how "comparing one's inside's to another's outsides," can lead to dangerous territory.

By this I mean-- competition and self doubt and keeping up with the Joneses and all those icky feelings that crop up when we're worried about who we are and what we do, and instead of just being who we are and doing what we do, we stop, and peer around the edge nervously, spying on our counterparts, and reading each others press, and worrying.

We worry that we have the wrong desserts and we employ the wrong methods.

We worry about how closely we're sticking to the seasons and if any Eat Localvores are going to arrest us for putting strawberries on our menu one day too soon.

We worry our menu is not approachable enough for the clientele we are serving. We worry our chef will keep making her/his portions bigger and bigger and keep complaining that dessert sales are too low to keep us on. We worry our desserts are better than our chef's savoury food & one day he'll notice and fire us for some bogus reason.

We worry.

We worry even when we're drunk or asleep or lounging easily on the bar or flirting with waiters or yelling at our cooks or trying to fix our Kitchen-Aid with masking tape or hiding our chinois in our lockers or doing our endless laundry or on a date or walking around nonchalantly as if we've not got a care in the world, on our one day off.

Sometimes the worry takes a vacation and ends up in a place it gets stuck because a volcano has decided to erupt or an earthquake has taken over the newsreels or someone in our family has died and

for a minute

we can breathe, worry-free.

But then it starts again.

We pick up a food magazine and see yet another recipe for a stupid dessert or a cliched pairing or the name of a pastry chef who's been getting press since dinosaurs opened ice cream parlours

Because a lot of complacency is what I see on most dessert menus, wherever I eat, wherever I work, whenever I travel.

It's all too easy to make dessert cliches. It's all too easy to easy to conform. It's all too easy to become the undead pastry chef. It's all too easy to do only what you were taught in school. It's all too easy to perpetrate crimes against plated desserts, pastries, sweet thangs.

Because the masses want same. Sameness sells. Lowest common denominator flies off the shelf. Boring rules. The bottom line is infatuated with mass production.

Sugar is a siren.The population is its ship. Sugar spins web of deception. The blind lead the stupid lead the lemmings. All to their creative death. And so it goes, round and round.

Because sugar, or the taste of sweetness, harkens back to our childhoods so strongly, and nostalgia is at the root of most classical dessert creations, it's difficult for people to allow pastry chefs to take chances with flavours/ingredients/pairings they love and hold close dearly.

Perhaps so close they suffocate pastry chefs!

So I beg of you this:

stop worrying and----->

start thinking outside the pink box. start coming up with some slightly new flavor pairings. stop only ordering from your purveyors and begin going to health food stores and online sources for some of your ingredients. start reading of-the-moment chef blogs and start looking more closely at food photos and buy some food magazines & cookbooks not written in your native tongue and get your mind out there-- even if you can't afford to travel your body on that culinary airplane. delve deeper into the ingredients you think you know-- try different animal eggs, animal fats, animal & grain & nut milks, various flours with and without gluten contents. toast your flours, taste new salts, experiment with as many kinds of sugars as you can find-- jaggeries, muscovados, raw/turbinado/demerarra, coconut sugar. taste honeys from all over the world. taste all strengths of Manuka honey. attempt using miso in replacement of salt, or even sugar. substitute labne or Greek yogurt or sheep's milk yogurt for creme fraiche. substitute fromage frais for ricotta. or better yet-- make your own ricotta! if you always use mascarpone, look into Crescenza or other triple cream wonders. try goat butter for your next batch of shortbread. challenge yourself to a week of vegan baking. gluten-free baking. nut-free baking. if you've never used fresh herbs in your muffins, cakes, cookies, buttercream, try it today. buy small batches of Organic non-irradiated ground spices and see what a difference they make compared to what your dry goods supplier is sending you. think they're too expensive? you only need 1/4 of the ginger root powder if it actually tastes like itself. go to restaurants just for dessert. get yourself out of your personal cave of dessert making and try someone else's creations. for all you know they're on twitter or facebook too and if you have questions imagine how happy they'll be to learn that you, another fellow pastry chef, came to eat their food & now has questions about some of their plates! do something besides sleep on your next day off. try getting inspiration from not just other food related sources. go to a gallery, a museum, get on a rollercoaster, take someone's kid to the zoo, or lay in the moss under some redwood trees and look high up into their canopy for perspective.

what are some other things you do to clear your head when your chef or the owner or your customers want you to make the same boring desserts they

remember from their childhood had their last pastry chef make know how to pronounce/eat/serve think they know how to make themselves eat year round whether those ingredients are in season or not are oppressing you with only boring dusty 1980's (or earlier!) ideas

?

Enquiring pastry Chefs want to know.

Remember this:

the first chef who made something which strayed from his tradition/culture/local ingredient list/ etc. had to work hard to convince others of his and its merit.

the comfortable spot you've cornered yourself into keeps you and me and other chefs and future diners dumb.

guerilla acts of change are necessary to facilitate education, growth, change and to open one's mind one might sometimes need a crowbar as well as a spatula.

my last official day at 10 Downing Street restaurant is Wednesday April 21Tuesday April 20. I am leaving on the best possible terms with the full support of my chef, sous chef, management & cooks. I gave a long notice and am doing everything possible to smooth out my transition, including the possibility of guest appearances in May.

It would be impossible to sum up, with mere words, my incredible experience of working with Jonnatan Leiva & Matthew Wilbur. It's very rare to be {a pastry chef} treated with such respect, equality and generosity. I could not recommend working with these true gentlemen enough. Whoever takes over the pastry helm next should consider themselves lucky, and honored. Not only do I depart adding two new colleagues to my close repertoire, but I add new friends for life.

You might be wondering why I would leave such an amazing kitchen. It is only for an an opportunity I would be crazy to pass up. Opening a[nother] restaurant. Nothing kicks your ass more. Nothing teaches you more in a shorter, more intense period of time. Few experiences in a cook's career are more amazing than opening a new business from scratch. Especially when one is chosen to be a key manager.

It's been a pleasure these last months to meet you, to feed you, and to, in turn, have your support. I look seeing you again should you walk in the door of my next adventure. Until then, who wants to have dinner at 10 Downing with me?

31 March 2010

Quitting a cooking job right has to be one of the most talked about subjects amongst cooks. Everyone wants to know how to do it right. And few people give, or take, notice of resignation well. Most cooks know that to give 2 weeks notice today is to have one's last day today. Most chefs know that to receive a 2 week's notice today is to have a good-for-nothing-'senioritis' cook for the next two weeks.

Giving notice right often appears to be more elusive than bankers showing personal responsibility for their actions. And, yet, is is possible. But you have to be prepared, intuitive, professional and treat the person/kitchen/establishment with as much integrity as you wish for others to treat you.

If you are not management, always give two weeks, at least. If you think the chef will fire you on the spot ask for your paycheck. In the USA you must be given your final check on the day you are fired. For every day you have to wait for your check your employer must pay you, whether you have worked or not. Knowing your State, City & Federal rights IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. If you think your chef is going to fire you on the day you give notice make sure you can afford it to give notice on that date.

If you want to give a proper notice and do not wish to be fired on the day you give notice, promise your chef that you will work every day you're scheduled harder than you have up until now.

Work hard to make the kitchen miss you and wish you were not leaving, before you give notice.

In the USA is is illegal for an employer to give you a malicious reference. The worst reference an old employer can give a prospective new employer is no reference at all.

But,

you know what?

Chefs are notoriously as club-ish as cops. If you have upset one chef in your city, chances are said chef will spread the word not to hire you. Yes, it does happen.

As I've said, many times before, a cook's world is small. Travel thousands of miles and you might work with someone you met already. Piss off a cook yesterday and tomorrow they could be your chef, or worse yet, your sous chef.

You think you're no one. You think no one notices. But chefs talk. They trade players or steal like baseball teams. Your chef, your pastry chef, sometimes a whole kitchen full of cooks, will be courted, will be swooned, will be stolen.

Give your notice with aplomb. Play your cards right.

Always play your cards professionally.

Even if your chef is a hack and the line is a bunch of shoemakers. Even if the owners of your restaurant are absent or drunk or appear to have no idea what it takes to build a successful restaurant.

Being professional when giving notice includes some, if not all, of these pointers ~

Write a letter of resignation. This is a letter, not a sentence. Write it like a real letter not a text or an email. Date it. Spell everything & everyone correctly. Say something about what you learned. Give your final day as a full date. ie: "I should like to work on and up until Saturday May 1st, 2010." Hand sign the letter. Put it in an envelope.

Print and hand deliver, do not email, your letter of resignation.

Give notice on a day or during an hour when you can have a few private minutes with your chef. Even if this means asking for that 'date' a number of days in advance.

Do not give notice in front of any of your co-workers. This will be seen as quitting and you surely will not get a good reference, or be able to place said job on your resume, if you quit.

In your letter of resignation say what you learned and why you're moving on.

Give 2 weeks even if you have only been at a job for 2 weeks.

Stay calm and collected no matter how your chef is reacting.

Do not stoop to insults. Do not cast aspersions. Do not place blame on others. Think about omitting the word 'you' from the beginning of your sentences and instead speak from an "I" perspective.

Stay positive. Really. In lieu of however your chef/owners are treating you in your resignation meeting, stay composed. People will remember that you remained professional. Even after they have calmed down. Freak out later in the bar or with your lover or to your friends, but remain clear and determined and calm with your boss[es].

Remember that you are not responsible for how your notice is taken but it helps to be compassionate/empathetic. It helps to see how your giving notice may look to your chef/team/house. Everyone takes departure differently. Know that those last two weeks will be hard and very very different.

Leave on a good note. Leave your station/partner better than what you came into.

If you have been in a kitchen for a long time, thank each cook/sous personally & privately. Even if it sounds sappy, people remember that shit. Many of us feel like we're in a thankless profession & getting a 'thanks, you taught me a lot' gets remembered.

If you are a chef, meaning you have a management role, your notice should be far more than 2 weeks. The longest notice I ever heard of was Eric Ziebold, who gave Thomas Keller a 4 year notice when he left The French Laundry to work in Washington DC. I gave Elizabeth Falkner a month's notice after working as her pastry chef at Citizen Cake for 2 years.

In the years since September 11, 2001 & this new economic downturn, giving notice has taken on new meaning. Few cooks & chefs are given the chance to do so before they are laid off or show up to see a city padlock on their kitchen. How owners and chefs give notice to their employees ranges from months and months notice to less than an hour.

It's a precarious business we're in. While people have to eat, they do not have to eat in restaurants or hotels or on cruise ships or hire caterers.

The restaurant where I work now has recently placed an ad on Craigslist for cooks. In the resumes we have perused so far, it's obvious times have changed radically. It used to be you could not put the name of a place you worked on your resume unless you had been there at least 6 months.

Now you're lucky if you see 3 months of continuous employment on someone's resume.

But I'll say it again.Treat your employer, your chef, as you wish to be treated. If that job has meant the world to you. If your chef is better than you ever thought she'd be. If your fellow cooks took time with you. If your sous taught you more than you ever thought you could learn in one span of time.If you mentored, made a difference, came early & stayed late, took a leadership position before one was given to you, loved every menu change, didn't just complain but worked on solutions, were proud to say your worked at that restaurant, woke up {almost} every day excited to work, can say those dishes you made were spot on, called a station Yours, pushed yourself out of your comfort zone, got buried in the weeds every service and helped those around you finding their way through the bogs too, you can barely say all your learned because it overwhelms you--

If

you can't believe you're leaving a restaurant, a chef, a sous chef

you have fallen in love with.

Treat those people, and yourself, with respect, integrity & professionalism.

Because in your next job you'll be working as many hours as you were working here, and it's easier to lose touch than stay connected.

And because

you never know all you've learneduntil you leave. until that job has become a dot in your rearview mirror.

I can't tell you how many times I've gotten jobs from connections I made in previous kitchens. Or with cooks I've worked with. Almost all, in fact.

Where I work now, for example. Gina dePalma, Babbo's everlasting pastry chef, was someone who kicked my ass to hell and back at Gramercy Tavern many many years ago, started asking around New York to see if anyone needed a pastry chef, when I was coming here from London last November. Jonnatan Leiva responded and then called Mourad Lahlou, a close friend to us both, to cross check me. It was on these two amazing chef's high recommendations that I landed in an execugtive role almost immediately after landing in New York City.

If you want to be treated with integrity, act with integrity. Even in the face of anarchistic unprofessionalism, that this industry is wont to display, at least recently, do it the old fashioned way.

you can think you know a chef, you can think you love a chef enough, you can think you have learned all you can learn in a chef's kitchen

until you give notice.

and you both cry. and you both reach for the others' hand. and you exchange thank yous that reach into the very core of who you are.and you are stunned by your chef's grace. and you realize in that moment you know nothing. and you know that knowing nothing means the most incredible journey ahead, not leaping off a bridge. and you feel goosebumps borne of honor. and you feel graced to have been allowed a position in his kitchen. and you both want everything for the other, the way the best, most unselfish love feels. and you know you will hate every minute that ticks away your time left in that chef's kitchen. and you know that you will be his friend forever. and he, yours. equally and without condition.

26 March 2010

Grand Central Station. Iconic. Marble. Vibrating today with bagpipes and straight backs and a history forgotten. There are tears at the edges of my eyes i did not put there. I am grateful to be on a train today. Grateful to have heard the music, the complicated instrument.

`

At the edge of Williamsburg, where development meets empty and water. The city always looks the flattest flat from this angle. Sunny out, wet underfoot. Looking for perspective. And answers that will never arrive.

23 March 2010

A recent post and some ensuing comments to it has led me to be thinking more about the current issues which restaurant kitchens face. This is not at all to say hotel and catering and test and bakery and private cheffing kitchens are excluded from these issues, but most of my experience is with restaurants, and since I cannot share with you what I don't know, I let you cross out one word and fill it in with the one you know. Let's make a deal, shall we-- give me a few centimeters of poetic license and I'll give you a small country's worth of poetic comprehension?

Restaurant kitchens are what you see when the industry is X rayed.

As well, restaurant kitchens tend to be the ones cooks become chefs in. Independently owned restaurants tend to be the professional cooking environments chefs become recognized names in.

And restaurants, in the Isosceles triangle of professional cooking hierarchy, are considered to be the peak. In other words there's an unspoken rule in cooking: restaurant cooks are real cooks and everyone else is a hack. Restaurant cooks look down on catering the same way New Yorkers make fun of New Jersey. It's unspoken, but really it's not.

Because of this prevalent attitude, when someone wants to start cooking professionally, they are rarely introduced to the hundreds of thousands of other ways to get paid to cook. And because restaurant cooking is notoriously, unapologetically brutal, cooks who 'can't make it' in restaurants feel like, or are made to feel, both overtly & silently, like complete failures.

Is it true the first step of recovery is admitting?

Or is it what you do with your admission that counts?

Understanding the emotional and pschychological tactics the restaurant industry use to attract, keep & work to death its cooks is important if one hopes to gain entry into its labyrinth.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still in it. I love it. But I know it too.

Well.

Not a lot appears to have changed in the industry since I naively joined it 17+ years ago. What was true then is still true now ~

most cooks do not get paid for all the hours they work

most cooks work 6 days a week or more than 5 shifts in 7 days

most cooks work an average of 60 hours a week, and chefs can be upwards of 120

most cooks are not offered &/or cannot afford health insurance

most cooks have to quit or get injured in order to 'get a vacation'

most cooks experience at least one if not multiple injuries which take them to the emergency room

most cooks are male and get paid more than their female counterparts, being 'Chef' is no exception

most cooks eat less than one meal a day

most cooks feel abused in their workplace & that abuse ranges from yelling to physical violence

most cooks have legal and illegal substance abuse issues, whether past or present

most cooks look as if they have not seen the sun in quite some time

most cooks can not afford to pay off their culinary school loans on the wages they make in the industry

most cooks who went to culinary school said it wasn't worth as much as they thought it would be once they began working 'for real'

most savoury cooks know nothing of pastry & vice versus

most savoury cooks/chefs do not like dessert, and think the making of it is below them

many savoury chefs do not employ equally good pastry chefs for fear dessert will compete with their limelight

most pastry chefs get treated like second class citizens by way of wage differential, equipment mistreatment or lack thereof, shortages in staff and in-equal billing/name mentioning on menu/website/press/cookbooks

pastry chefs rarely get the kind of press savoury chefs do (when was the last time you saw a photo of a pastry chef on the cover of Food & Wine etc.)

I think you see my point.

You might ask why I still do it. Knowing what I know. Or seeing that, in almost 20 years, not much has changed.

And I say. Be the change you want to see in the world. Even if your world is only as small as restaurant kitchens. Even if your world is only as small as the cooks {?un}lucky enough to work with you. Even if your world is only as small as you think it is. Because making change takes a long time. Change can oft not be seen until it's become quite small in the rearview mirror.

There has been a change in the industry I've called home in the last 17 years. And, to be fair, it had started long before I stepped on the foot of Reed Hearon who was the chef to kick my ass to hell and back all those years ago.

In a profession considered a craft considered a lifelong education considered a place where you paid your goddamn dirty dues in a workplace considered to be completely insane and without fairness or law or recourse or reason in a series of apprenticeships unpaid and paid with minimum wage and or easily let bodily fluids and not, what was discontinued to be, slowly, quietly, but methodically undermined by this thing we know as culinary school.

But because a school system was built to more quickly train what it had taken others {who would be, no doubt, asked to teach in such facilities} dozens and dozens of years to learn.

And that, my friends, is what I was implying but did not say outright in my last post.

What has changed, because of culinary schools or the advent of them; because of tv chefs or the creation of themselves as products by mainstream media to sell you an image you'd rather swallow whole than the Real One (see bulleted list above); because of reality shows and the chefs they 'find' to play real ones on tv {all entendres intended}; because of all the glossy food magazines telling you how much luxurious fun it is to be a chef,

what has slowly crept in, i n s i d i o u s l y is the HURRY.

The speed at which everyone seems to want to be a Chef.

WHAT IS THE BIG HURRY?

To become something that one can't really become anyway? Because being a chef is a verb. It's about learning and growing and asking millions of questions and eating and smelling and tasting and listening and it's constant. Sometimes its the kind of repetition that makes you want to blow your brains out. Sometimes it's rewarding in ways you can not verbalize so you cry or do another line of coke or fuck your brains out or lay down on the floor and look up at the ceiling after a particularly grueling night of service. Most of the time only those who wear your uniform too can understand your accomplishments, albeit small or far between.

The hurry is disrespectful.

It disrespects every person who has come before you. It disrespects those who have taken their whole life to learn. It disrespects those who are attempting to teach you. It disrespects the industry as a whole. It disrespects the craft. It disrespects every piece of food you touch, every animal you butcher, every service you try and set up for. It disrespects diner, owner, dishwasher, waiter, busser. It disrespects the finesse, the knife, the ingredients, the process, the uniform.

If you're in a hurry you're disrespecting yourself.

And that disrespect affects me and affects the kitchen as a whole, and in turn affects the entire industry.

The way a city begins to lose its soul when landmarks are destroyed, this hurry has eroded parts of a craft I love fiercely and wish to protect.

And

to know a love, to be a craft, to walk a talk, to have and to hold dedication, to live a full life, to be brave and vulnerable both, to speak the truth despite circumstance and loneliness, to rally and advocate for the silenced, to write about those whose words will never be read, to listen, to know and still to speak out, to keep what I have by giving it away, to attract but not promote, to conjure stamina day in and day out, to learn and to teach, to mentor and to guide, to allow dissent, to practice anger without violence, to swim deeper and deeper into into the whys and the hows, to engage you, to bake and share delicious foods, is the hope of eggbeater, and its author.

08 February 2010

I don't have to tell you that the economy of your country, city, town, continent, family has tanked. I don't have to tell you anything about it. You know. I don't have to tell you to hold onto your job. You have. As long as you've been able to. I don't have to tell you not to spend your money on frivolous items. You either have or you have not; either out of need or need to rebel. I don't have to tell you how many restaurants have closed, how many cooks and chefs and pastry chefs are out of work. I don't have to tell you that if you love, really love a restaurant, you may want to become a regular. I don't have to tell you that if you really love a chef or a pastry chef's work, you should tell everyone you know to go eat at said person's workplace. You know. I don't have to tell you the power of positive press is far quieter than the power of negative press. Whether you rant indignantly on Yelp, or feed a piece of barely true gossip to Eater, or pan a place on Chowhound, or talk doo-doo on your own blog/Twitter/Facebook about a particular place, you play a part in the wild fire that will surely consume said business. I don't have to tell you anything. You know why? You know. You're smart. You read as much as I do. Probably more.

I don't have to tell you what happened on September 11, 2001. I don't have to tell you that the Internet Bubble, based on money which did not exactly exist, but which was generating thousands of businesses to be born, and invite more people than could even fit in San Francisco & beyond to move there, and displace thousands more, burst. At about the same time as September 11, 2001.O yes. It was a fun year. A great time to be working in a luxury industry making food people neither needed nor could afford.I lost my job of 2 years that year. After that I was unemployed for longer than I have been since I started working, at age 14. I witnessed over 6,000 restaurants close in San Francisco. In one year. You probably remember that time as well as I do. I know you remember what you were doing that day. And if you lived in NYC or the Bay Area, you remember the recovery time. It took years.

It is for these memories, these reasons, these experiences, which I still feel, still know, viscerally, that I remain forever grateful to have a job, when I have one. It is for these memories, these reasons, these experiences, which I still feel, still know, viscerally, that I have grown. It is for these memories, these reasons, these experiences, which I still feel, still know, viscerally, that hope to always know perspective, even the smallest amount, is utterly important.

Because

a little perspective

goes

a long way.

When it happens all over again. History is only important, if you can learn from it.

There are very few restaurants that do not have to worry. About food costs. About labor percentages, about inventory, rent, the economy, holidays, weather, natural catastrophes, equipment, vermin, waste, stealing, lawsuits, worker injuries, etc. Very few. Not none, but probably less than a percent I'm guessing.

Everyone thinks it's so much fun to be a chef. So creative. So nifty. So delicious. So exciting. So glamorous.

And they're right.

Some of the time.

The rest of the time they're wrong. Very wrong.

Because sometimes the most creative things you're doing is

figuring out how to cut costs without firing your entire staff

changing your menu overnight because none of your purveyors will deliver to you because of outstanding invoices

working every station even though the kitchen is composed of 6 stations in the layout of a 3 bedroom house

juggling a myriad of medication to take while working sick

offering every kind of 'special' that will attract every kind of diner at any price point you think all of these people can or will want to afford

filching your numbers to reflect what the owners want to see

keeping your management away from the bar where you know they're drinking away any of the profits you might otherwise be barely seeing

figuring out how to serve food you worry is going off but can't afford to throw out

shaving ounce after ounce off of your plates of food in ways diners won't notice so you don't have to raise prices, which diners always notice

keeping your body alive on 3 hours of sleep, no food and coffee as your only imbibement

switching arms, hands, wrists, because your primary one is so injured you can no longer use it well

and

p.s. you don't have health insurance

even though

you work in one of the most physically challenging indoor workplaces you know of

Menu Changes.

These words are a stand in for other words.

Menu Changes mean a variety of things. A menu changing is a symptom. Menus Change because they have to.

After September 11th, 2001, Menus Changed. In order for restaurants to stay afloat, they had to lower prices, drop expensive proteins, lay off extraneous staff {ie pastry chefs}, ask the staff that stayed to take pay-cuts & do twice the work.

A lot of Menus Changed and many restaurants started making Comfort Food. The United States needed comfort. A lot of it.

So tonight, when I was asked to change my menu, radically, I understood. I didn't like it, but I didn't stomp my feet and say, "It's not fair!"

I understood its implication. I know its history.

I had my "reactionary, emotional, angry" self tempered, calmed {silently} by my 'Grounded Self,' and I took the order as a challenge.

For I am only one of millions who has [had] to Change Menus. Change plans. Change on a dime.

Change Menus. Get grateful. Turn challenge into lesson. Know life is full of lessons. Have perspective. Calm down enough to see the forest through the trees.

...it looks like I'll be here for a while. until Spring I imagine, maybe longer. I've been grounded by a severe back issue. physical therapy, acupuncture & pain medication are my current recipe for recovery. not to mention love & support from family & friends.

that's the news, as I know it to be, right now. but, as the expression goes, "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute."

06 November 2009

I’m
traveling through time. Over one body of water, from one piece of land to
another. I’m high up, in the air, where there is no time, where there is no
ground, and I’m thinking about how I know not what’s next, except for the
obvious, the concrete, the empirical.

I
consider NYC my home and yet it’s been years since I physically inhabited it.
Since I walked its streets daily, hourly.

I’m
going to NYC for practical reasons. It’s closer to Europe, to London, where
I’ve lived for the past year, albeit tenuous, precarious.

When
you travel you lose yourself. You lose mirrors and memories and history. You
step into another history, another language, another neighborhood. You’re just
around the corner and no one can find you. You can’t find yourself. You have
this whole life behind you, but you left it at the airport gate.

While
it’s impossible to become someone you’re not, it is possible to re-invent.
Perhaps you were stuck where you lived before you traveled, and after doing,
what you had always done, you wanted to do something new, and getting the
upstart to kick a transformation into gear felt like molasses stuck to an
elephant walking through swampy mud.

Traveling
sheds. The airplane takes off and your feet can’t touch the ground. You are a
child in a big seat. You swing your legs, feel lighter, float in the seawater. The sky looks so different from here.

It
feels possible, whatever the it is you want to get to.

Even
if you’re not sure what it is, you know you need to make a big change.

You
are one or the other: Roadrunner, Coyote. And whether you stop just short of
the canyon, fall over it’s edge, or make it to the other side because you’re moving
cartoon fast, it’s a journey you must make.

Got
dusty? flattened yourself in a ravine?

No
matter.

This
is what transformation is about. It’s about the sun being so high in the sky,
shadows appear to disappear. You are your shadow. Your compass is broken.

The
people you love are left behind. They write and you write, they call and you
call, they plead for you to come back, but you stay.

Some
chapters are better saved before published, indexed before edited. Some
chapters are better written by hand.

People
ask you, when you go to New York, 'Are you moving there?'

You make a joke. {You
think it’s really funny.} You say you don’t know if you’re moving to New York.
You say you’ve asked g-d, but he hasn’t replied. You say that if anyone who has a
direct line to g-d, can you please let me know, because as far as you know, {the only thing you know} is you
are moving, Officially,

To
Limbo.

O.
And there are a few complicated pieces. Secret Lovers. Old loves. Loveletters.
A flat you secretly rent in a place you’re not supposed to be living. A {restaurant} kitchen you’re not supposed to know as
well as you do.

Because
you’re going back to the place you’re from, you plan on looking for work.
Postman’s Holiday. You can’t wait to work there again. It’s been over 10 years.
You never meant to be away this long. In fact while you were living on the
completely other coast, in the most rural setting you had ever come across, you
lost your desire to live in a major city. You decided to make Northern
California your permanent home, and even called it that.

Until
you moved to London exactly one year ago. And everything changed.

I’m
traveling through time. Time Travel.

The question is: am I going from my future to my past;
my future to my future; my recent past to my stopover, and then back to my past;
my past to my past; or my question mark to my question mark?